


hamsa

by luoup (ravenic)



Category: Countdown to Countdown (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Demiflora Powers, Hurt/Comfort, Rescue, aftermath of kidnapping, but like medical eye attention?, not quite eye trauma, so if that makes you uncomfortable you probably don't want to read this, there's a lot of discussion about eyes even though nothing specifically happens to them, this is just a big pile of theory and overhypothesizing sryyy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-07 00:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19074268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/luoup
Summary: Lillium is alive, and Iris is going to get him back even if he has to walk right into a spawncamper headquarters to do it.He's not exactly prepared for what he finds.  Turns out Liliesdohave special eyes.





	hamsa

**Author's Note:**

> this has been a persistent thought in my brain since the dog killed lillium and the spawncampers said Lily eyes were valuable. that line plus the bandaged hands led me to this concept, and now that we know lillium is alive but held by the spawncampers, i had to write it all out before it inevitably gets jossed. (legitimately i love this series and the art and the story and i wanted more so i wrote it and then got absolutely carried away whoops)
> 
> sorry, lillium.

_Go get Lillium._

_He’s tough.  He’ll still be alive._

_He’s all I have left._  

Iris was not a fighter.  He’d hidden in the lab for so many years, and when he finally made it out, he just kept on hiding, only this time behind Lillium.  _Weak little flower._   But Lillium was a demiflora too, and he was brave and strong and Iris could only look at him like the sun. 

Now, though, everything had changed. Lillium was gone, captured, and Iris was here.  Begonia couldn’t help.  He had to do this himself. 

He owed Lillium that much. 

Iris felt nothing as he traced out the forms of bandages and ointment in the sand, reaching in and _taking_.  It would be enough for now.  He didn’t have time to worry about his leg. 

He didn’t let himself think too long about what state Lillium might be in once he found him.  All that mattered was that he _did_ find him, and that he was alive.  They would go to Begonia’s.  She would be able to fix everything.  Iris just needed to get Lillium and get him to her. 

Okay.  Find the spawncamper’s base without being found.  Get in.  Find Lillium.  Get both of them out without dying. 

Piece of cake. 

Iris tried to still the trembling in his hands, and began to walk. 

*

Finally, finally, Iris’s luck had turned.  He had found the spawncamper base without getting lost – or at least without getting too lost.  The spawncampers themselves were almost all away, and the camp seemed totally empty.  Maybe they were still looking for Iris, hunting along the river and through the trails, searching for the demiflora they’d failed to capture. 

Iris hoped the glitch got them. 

There were still a few guards, but they were easy enough to sneak past.  They never detected Iris, and the demiflora crept by undisturbed. 

_Okay.  You’ve made it this far.  Next step: find Lillium._

_If I were a bunch of nasty awful monstrous spawncampers, where would I keep a captured, drugged demiflora?_

The center, obviously.  Iris continued through the camp, moving as quietly and quickly as he could, every sense straining for a warning of being discovered.  But it seemed like for the first time in his life, his luck was holding.  The few spawncampers he saw were a distance away and not paying attention, and for the most part he was totally alone. 

There.  A larger tent, clearly important.  A guard was posted in front of the main entrance, but… Yes.  There was a back entry, and it was unguarded.  Iris thanked whatever stars had aligned today, and went in. 

Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.  Nothing he’d ever learned in the lab, none of Lillium’s or Begonia’s cryptic words – the sight froze Iris in his tracks. 

He had found Lillium. 

The other demiflora was tied down to a table in the center of the space, wrists and ankles bound to the surface with thick leather straps.  He was clearly still drugged, barely moving.  A blindfold was tied tightly over his face.  Iris remembered that pink-red flash in Lillium’s desperate eyes as he told Iris to _run_ , how Iris had had no control over his own body and had just run, no matter how hard he tried to stop, tried to go back to Lillium.  He wondered what the spawncampers knew. 

Lillium’s eyes were covered, but his hands were – not.  They were bare, for the first time Iris had ever seen.  From the moment their eyes had first met in the lab, the other Flora had worn bandages over his hands and wrists.  He changed them daily, Iris knew, but he always left the room when he did so and Iris had never seen beneath them.  He had wondered, of course.  People didn’t just keep their hands bandaged like that for no reason.  But no matter how carefully he watched, he never saw any traces of red seeping through the cloth, and Lillium never seemed to be in pain or discomfort.  He used his hands just fine, except that they were always wrapped in a layer of white. 

Now they were not.  Now, there were no cloth covering the pale skin.  Lillium’s hands were bare, and so Iris could clearly see the eyes on his palms, irises even brighter than Lillium’s – real eyes?  Other eyes?  _The eyes that were on his face like a normal person what the fuck was going on._

Cautiously, Iris moved closer.  The eyes on Lillium’s palms blinked slowly, rolling to the side towards the sound of Iris walking.  Iris shuddered slightly.  They were so… real.  Real actual eyeballs, no different from the eyeballs generally found in human and demiflora skulls, just… in Lillium’s palms, instead.  He must have been incredibly drugged up, because the eyes moved just like the eyes of someone who was really very severely tranquilized.  Iris wondered if Lillium could see out of them, when he wasn’t mostly unconscious. 

Out of the blue, a memory resurfaced.  Iris could remember a book he’d read, back in the lab, a very old book from long ago.  One of the pictures had shown a symbol, an eye on an open palm.  It was a ward against evil. 

Lillium’s hands had eyes on them, just like in the book. 

Iris shook his head hard.  There was not time for him to stand here goggling at Lillium’s new (not new, not really – just new to Iris) hand-eyes.  Hamsas?  He was pretty sure that was the word the book had used for that symbol, open eye on open palm. 

They needed to get out of here.  Once they were safe, once Lillium was fine and okay and back to normal, Iris would question him to within an inch of his life about the eye-hand hamsas, and also about a lot of other things (for example, who the _fuck_ was Irid, and why did he have Iris’s face?).  But for that to happen, they had to get out.  Once Lillium was fully conscious (and still alive), _then_ Iris could ask questions.  Right now, they just needed to go. 

He was so motionless.  The broad blindfold covered most of his face, and what was visible was frighteningly slack and blank, the skin pale and still.  The hand-eyes were moving, but slowly and without any real direction to their shifting.  They blinked, slow and dragging. 

The cuffs around Lillium’s wrists and ankles were thick heavy leather, but they were simple enough to open.  Iris wondered if Lillium had struggled.  Then he quickly made himself think of something else, anything else. 

He reached out hesitantly, touching Lillium’s shoulder as if the other Flora was in danger of shattering at his touch.  Lillium didn’t move. 

“Lillium,” Iris hissed, shaking him lightly.  Nothing.  “Lillium!”

“Mmm…”

Whatever the spawncampers had used, it was powerful.  But Lillium was waking up.  That was good – Iris almost certainly couldn’t carry him out of here.  Lillium probably weighed twice as much as he did at least, and there were spawncampers everywhere. 

Iris pulled the blindfold off Lillium’s face, dropping it on the floor.  He shook the other demiflora’s shoulders harder.  “Lillium, wake up!”

“Hmmrgh…” Lillium’s eyelids – the ones on his face – twitched and shifted.  Finally, they fluttered open, landing hazily on Iris’s face.  “I… Irid?”

 _What did they even give him?_   “No.  It’s Iris.  Come on, Lillium.  We need to go.  Come on, get up.”

Lillium made it to a sitting-up position, but he wavered dangerously and Iris kept his hands on his shoulders for fear of him toppling straight off the table.  He must have felt something against a normally-covered wrist or palm, because he looked down slowly, blinking at the eye set into his hand.  It blinked back. 

“Ah,” said Lillium, which didn’t explain anything at all. 

“Come on,” Iris said, trying to put encouragement into his voice in place of the panic he was fighting down.  Their luck wasn’t going to last, they needed to _leave_.  “Let’s go.  Begonia’s waiting for you.”

That got his attention.  Lillium looked up, blinking owlishly at Iris.  “Begonia?  Where’s Be–”

And that was it.  The luck had run out. 

Five spawncampers in full gear and gas masks entered the space through the main door.  Expecting to find their captive Flora bound and unconscious and alone, they were quite surprised to find not one but two Floras, both awake and conscious (or at least semi-conscious, in Lillium’s case), and neither one of them tied down. 

For a moment, everyone in the room was frozen.  Iris was paralyzed, frozen like a rabbit before wolves.  He was unarmed.  There was no way that he and Lillium could fight them off.  Weak skinny Iris and drugged half-conscious Lillium against five spawncampers with machine guns – it wouldn’t even be a fight.  Honestly, they would probably both just die.  The spawncampers looked angry.  They weren’t going to be worth keeping alive.  At best, they would keep Lillium alive but with more drugs and more restraints (a half-remembered memory surfaced, something about _“Lily eyes are only valuable if the Lily is still alive”_ – and now Iris was starting to wonder which set of eyes the spawncamper had been talking about), but Iris had already died twice and this was about to be Death Number Three. 

The spawncampers raised their guns, the confusion in their eyes about how Iris had gotten in overridden by the anger about risking losing their captive Lily.  Iris did nothing, his entire body frozen like the pictures he’d reached into so often.  Acrylic-stiff, print-still.  Paralyzed and motionless as the domino fall of events crashed down around him. 

Lillium, though – Lillium wasn’t frozen.  No, Lillium was sitting up, was lifting his arms and holding his hands out like he could beg the spawncampers for their lives.  Hands out, open – eyes staring at the spawncampers with irises that glowed bright pink. 

_“Stop.”_

The spawncampers froze.  Every single one, oil-painting still.  Staring with wide, surprised eyes at the two demiflora – one as paralyzed as they, the other with two sets of eyes, a pair in his face and a pair in his palms, both shining a brilliant rose. 

_“Drop your weapons.”_

Every gun in the room clattered to the floor.  Other than their hands spasming open to follow the Command, and their faint shallow breathing, each spawncamper was still and motionless.  Silent.  Obeying. 

Iris recognized this.  Lillium wasn’t even looking at him, but he could almost feel the effect of the order.  It felt exactly like when Lillium had been shot with the dart and told Iris to run.  Not just asked him to go like a normal person (well, as normal as someone who had just been darted asking their companion to run for their life could ask), but – a _C_ _ommand._

_Run._

And Iris had run.  He hadn’t had a choice.  Lillium’s eyes had glowed pink, and then that word had been the only thing in his mind, the only thing he could think or hear or see or feel. 

He didn’t envy the spawncampers, trapped in their tracks at a single word.  He didn’t feel bad for them, either.  A single glance at the raw marks on Lillium’s wrists banished any trace of sympathy. 

Don’t look a gift demiflora in the… eyes?  That was a bad metaphor.  Anyway, it was time to go.  Iris wasn’t sure how long the Lily Command would last – his had been broken when he’d fallen into the river – but he didn’t want to stick around to find out. 

One last thing – Iris scurried forward, watching the paralyzed spawncampers with the focus of a sparrow under hawks’ eyes.  He scooped up one of the guns, and then, after a second’s thought, grabbed another.  He wedged both into side pockets of his backpack, then scuttled backwards, only relaxing a hairsbreadth once he was out of their range.  “Come on, Lillium, let’s go,” he said quietly, breathlessly. 

Lillium seemed a bit more awake now, although whether that was just adrenaline was up for debate.  In any case, it was enough that he could walk now, albeit with his arm over Iris’s shoulders and most of his weight leaned on the smaller demiflora’s frame.  That was okay.  Iris was willing to take a lot more, if they could just make it out of here. 

The spawncampers who had come into the room must have been a single bunch.  The rest of the camp was still deserted.  Maybe they were all out looking for more demifloras (looking for Iris, the one who got away).  Maybe they were just out enjoying the day and being nice people for once.  Iris didn’t care.  He just wanted to get out of here, in one piece, with Lillium.  Both of them alive, back to Begonia.  That was all he could focus on. 

Lillium was heavy.  He was a lot bigger than Iris, taller and broader and with a lot more muscle.  By the time they got out of the camp, Iris was breathing hard, his body starting to ache from the strain of trying to keep Lillium upright and moving.  The other demiflora was fading fast.  Whatever the campers had given him had been strong, and while he’d gotten himself up on his own power, it was rapidly draining. 

Iris could only hope that it would last until they reached the save point.  He didn’t think he would be able to drag Lillium very far, especially if any more spawncampers showed u –

He should have known better.  He should have known better than to hope that their luck would hold.  They were called _spawncampers_ for a reason – here was the save point, and here were the people who wanted to kill anyone who came out of it, or who wanted to go in. 

There were three of them.  Iris was small and skinny and nowhere near strong enough to fight them – he’d learned that many times by now – and Lillium was practically hanging off of his shoulder, maybe slightly conscious at best.  They were both, obviously, demiflora.

Iris scrabbled for one of the guns.  But he’d made a stupid mistake, put them in his backpack instead of a pocket or somewhere that would be easy to reach with had a semi-conscious Lillium draped over him.  He couldn’t reach it, was moving too slow. 

The save point was right there, but they weren’t going to make it.  The spawncampers were raising their weapons.  Iris wondered where he would wake up this time.  If it would take a long time to die.  What they would do to Lillium in the time it took him to resurrect and find him again.  If he would find him again.  If he would even come back this time. 

He didn’t close his eyes, so he was able to watch Lillium visibly draw himself together and straighten.  It was a little more awkward, one arm out with the palm facing forward, the other looped around Iris’s shoulders, hand raised crookedly on his other side.  It was enough. 

_“Freeze.”_

Surrounded by Lily eyes on all sides, Lily voice right beside him, Iris couldn’t be sure whether his stillness was from fear or from the Command.  For the spawncampers, though, it was obvious. 

Each one, still and motionless like the others in the tent back at the camp.  Iris wondered if they were still there, how long they would be standing frozen with their guns at their feet.  He hoped viciously that it would be a long time. 

_“Kneel.”_

Lillium’s voice was rough, raspy, and his hands were trembling.  But they gleamed just as bright pink as they had in the tent, in the forest when he’d told Iris to _run_.  The campers had no choice.  The Lily Command brought them to their knees, rough stilted movements like badly-controlled puppets.  Their eyes shone with rage, but Lillium’s shone brighter. 

“We need to go.” The whisper was so quiet Iris thought he’d imagined it.  He realized it was the first complete sentence Lillum had said since waking up, the first coherent words that weren’t Lily Commands.  He was right.  Now that Iris looked, he could see Lillium’s hands shaking, and his face was so pale the skin seemed almost transparent.  “I can’t keep them much longer.  Don’t have the power.  Wherever we’re going, we gotta go now.”

 _That_ , Iris could do.  The save point was bright and glittering, and although both of them were at the end of their strength, it was the easiest thing they’d done all day to walk across the clearing, past the statue-still spawncampers, and enter it. 

Shades of darkness, swirling with static.  A rushing feeling, moving without walking, and then there was Begonia’s door.  It was the most welcoming thing Iris had ever seen in his life. 

Moving through the save point must have drained the last traces of Lillium’s strength.  As they passed through the port to Begonia’s area, the bigger demiflora sagged, nearly taking Iris down with him as he slumped like a puppet with his strings cut. 

Iris hissed and cursed, dragging Lillium the last few steps to the pink door and kicking it as hard as he could without falling over.  “Come on, come on,” he murmured, trying to haul Lillium higher up on his arm and failing.  He felt about at the end of his strength too, too exhausted to fully process that he had just single-handedly rescued Lillium from the grasp of the spawncampers and made it to the save point and Begonia’s.  He was too exhausted to really think about any of it, including the fact that Lillium had eyes on his hands and could Command people to do what he said.  He was too tired for any of this.  It all felt like the worst kind of dream, except he had Lillium back so maybe it wasn’t really so bad. 

He kicked the door again, wondering how long he could stand here, holding Lillium up.  It wasn’t going to be much longer, he knew that for sure.  Lillium was barely clinging to consciousness, unable to stand on his own at all, and Iris honestly didn’t feel all that much better.  The adrenaline crash was hitting them both hard, and Iris was realizing how long he had been running, how long it had been since the last time they’d rested, eaten.  It had been a while. 

The door opened with a crash.  Begonia stood before them, wearing a billowy pink tunic and sensible black pants, bare feet floating a few inches above the floor.  Her dusty-rose eyes widened at the sight before her: Iris, battered and covered in dust and scrapes, struggling to keep a barely conscious Lillium on his feet.  Lillium hung nearly limp from where his arm was slung over Iris’s shoulders, head hanging down like he didn’t have the strength to lift it.  His wrists were scraped and bruised, and his hands were bare. 

 _“Lillium.”_   Begonia said the demiflora’s name like a prayer that had been answered.  “Oh my s-stars, come in, q-quickly!”

“Dunno if we can,” Iris gritted out.  He took a tentative, shuffling step, and at the change in balance nearly pitched forward as Lillium’s body swung forward alarmingly.  Begonia squeaked and flashed forward, wriggling her way underneath Lillium’s other arm and taking on enough of his weight that Iris could walk without sending them all to the ground.  She was small, but maybe the floating made it easier to carry someone.  Iris didn’t know. 

The three of them shuffled haphazardly into the house.  Begonia raised her free hand, and the doorknob glowed magenta as the door swung shut behind them.  “P-put him over h-here,” she said, guiding them as carefully as she could to the couch in her sitting room.  Between the two of them and a quite possibly a bit of Begonia’s magic, they got Lillium onto the couch without dropping him. 

Iris sat down heavily beside the couch as Begonia darted off again – hopefully for medicine or something.  Iris had no idea what to do, now that they actually had Lillium back.  He didn’t know what the spawncampers had given him, or when it would wear off, or if it had any long-term effects. 

He didn’t know anything about the eyes on Lillium’s hands, he thought again as he watched them.  They were mostly closed, occasionally drifting open to glance around the room muzzily before fluttering shut again.  The bright pink irises were hazed over and unfocused, all traces of glow long faded.  The spawncampers could surely move again now, but the demiflora they had been hunting were now long gone, and spawncampers couldn’t even touch a save point, much less follow the path of two exhausted demiflora to the home of a third. 

And thank the Sun for that. 

Lillium lay slumped bonelessly over Begonia’s couch.  Iris would have thought he was dead, except for the faintest rise and fall of his chest beneath the tattered and bloodied _Justice Is Blind_ shirt.  The only sound in the house was the slamming of cupboard doors and the clatter of porcelain as Begonia… did something in the kitchen.  Iris hoped she had a magic cure for whatever was wrong with Lillium, because he was completely and utterly drained.  He didn’t think he could even get up, much less be useful. 

Lillium shifted suddenly, muscles tensing weakly and rolling halfway off the couch before Iris could catch him.  With great effort, the smaller demiflora pushed him back to a stable position, but Iris’s hands lingered.  Lillium seemed to be starting to surface from whatever drugged haze the spawncampers had put him in, but it was a struggle.

Lillium’s eyes could barely stay open, fluttering dazedly as he tried to focus on Iris’s face.  It took him two tries to form words, but finally a rasping, “… Irid?” made it out in audible form. 

Iris sighed.  He wished that none of this had never happened.  He wished that Lillium was fine, that he was in the kitchen with Begonia cooking some ridiculous breakfast assortment, that they’d never been caught by the spawncampers, that Iris had never found the demiflora hideout by the river and seen that poster with his face on it – his face, but not him.  “No, Lillium.  It’s Iris.  We’re safe, you’re at Begonia’s house.”

Lillium blinked.  It was slow, a movement that would have been catlike if he didn’t look so sick.  “… oh.”  His brows furrowed, making it look like he was thinking very hard when he was probably just trying to string a simple sentence together.  “You’re okay?”

At that, Iris had to smile.  _I’ve died twice, and I remember both.  I watched you die, your throat torn out by a spawncamper’s dog after you killed to protect me.  It didn’t work, but you tried.  I’ve been under your Command, forced to run away while you sacrificed yourself_ again _to save me.  I found a demiflora resistance camp that had been led by someone who looks just like me but_ isn’t me _.  It was empty and dead.  I got you back out of the jaws of the beast.  I learned why your hands are always bandaged up.  Is it uncomfortable, to have eyes set into your palms?  Is that why you keep them covered?  Why don’t you tell me everything?  Begonia knows, I think, but I don’t.  I’m not sure I want to, but I think I need to._

_We both almost died.  You were drugged and probably would have been tortured and murdered, but I found you in time.  You’re still more out of it than I’ve ever seen you, but your first focus is still, somehow, on me.  And I don’t know why._

Out loud, Iris said, “Yeah.  I’m okay.”

Lillium sighed, letting his eyes drift back shut.  “Good.”

When Begonia came back in to the living room, she was walking quickly, almost running.  Iris wasn’t sure why his brain had noticed that until he realized that he could actually hear the sound of her bare feet hitting the hardwood boards.  She wasn’t floating, or flying, or whatever it was that she did.  He wasn’t sure what that meant – whether she was focusing too hard, or not hard enough, or if this was a serious thing and she needed to save whatever powers she seemed to have for something. 

Iris was starting to realize how little he knew about demifloras, and about their powers. 

In both hands, Begonia was carrying a tray.  Balanced on it were three teacups, a glass bottle filled with water, and an assortment of small vials and bottles made of dark glass and labeled in a fine lacelike writing that Iris couldn’t fully read.  At least one of the little bottles was printed _Lily_. 

“Bugognaaa,” Lillium slurred, smiling at her somewhat blankly. 

Begonia giggled, and Iris had to suppress a snort.  “Hello, Lillium,” she answered softly.  “I’m glad you’re back.  A-are you feeling better?”

Lillium nodded, closing his eyes against the following dizzy spell.  “Not… ’m not kidnapped anymore.  So tha’s nice.  Dreamed ’bout dogs.  Dreamed that I died.  ’M happy that I’m here now.  … With, with you.”

Iris’s heart panged.  He reached out to take Lillium’s hand, looked at the exposed pink eye blinking slowly from the palm, and redirected, very gently laying his hand on Lillium’s shoulder.  “You’re safe now.  It’s over.”

“Yes,” Begonia agreed, reaching for the tray.  “We’re all s-safe and everyth-thing is alright.  Now you can r-rest.”

“Good.  B’cause I’m really freaking tired.”  That got a laugh out of all of them. 

Iris didn’t know anything about first aid, or whatever variations of it demifloras used.  He could barely read the labels of the bottles on Begonia’s tray, much less knew how to use them.  So for the next period of time – there were no clocks in the room, and he had no idea how long the three of them sat together in silence – he just watched Begonia treat Lillium.  The room was silent but for their quiet breathing and the rustling of cloth and clinking of glass as Begonia worked.  Iris watched closely, trying to memorize what she did, in case, Sun forbid, this ever happened again and he couldn’t get back to Begonia – or worse, she was the one who needed treating.  Iris had no idea what Lillium could or couldn’t do.  He had been surprised before, but he was beginning to learn that he couldn’t rely on others forever.  He needed to be able to care for himself, and care for others rather than just being taken care of all the time. 

Begonia started with a tiny magenta glass bottle loopily labeled _Lily_.  She reached and oh so gently took Lillium’s right hand in hers, turning it over so that the pink-irised eye was blinking hazily up at her.  She smiled at it, and Iris wondered again how much Lillium could see with his hamsa eyes, how the world looked when you had four literal eyes: two in your face, and one in each hand.  Very carefully, Begonia dripped two drops of the perfectly clear whatever-was-in-the-bottle into the eye, which blinked faster at the intrusion.  She gently dabbed away the extra with a lilac handkerchief, then did the same with Lillium’s left hamsa eye. 

After the eyes had received their drops, Iris watched Begonia rub the palest blue cream on the bruises and contusions around Lillium’s wrists.  Then she took a roll of bandages from the tray, and began to wrap them. 

After everything that had happened that day, this was maybe the most surreal experience.  Iris watched in silence as Lillium’s hands returned to what he had once known as their natural state.  The bruises vanished beneath layers of clean white cloth as he looked on.  Begonia lightly brushed her fingers over the hamsa eyes, and when they fluttered shut, gently covered them over in bandages. 

She cleaned the injection point on Lillium’s neck from his initial capture, put a small bandage over it, and that was it. 

“N-nothing left to do until he s-sleeps it off,” Begonia said quietly, sitting back.  Her eyes were unbelievably tender as she looked over her close friend’s sleeping form.  “H-he’ll b-be alright now, though.”

Iris let out a huge sigh.  Now that the danger was over and Lillium was safe (and Iris himself felt safe, too – finally), Iris was suddenly more tired than he had ever been in his life.  He slumped down in the chair, exhaustion dragging his bones down towards the earth. 

“O-oh no you d-don’t,” Begonia said, keeping her voice low to avoid disturbing Lillium but maintaining a sharp note.  “Not in a ch-chair.  Y-you need rest too.  Come on, l-let’s go to bed.”

Iris forced his eyes open, a spike of anxiety rising in his chest at the thought of leaving Lillium alone.  “But Lillium–”

“B-but Lillium is going to st-stay d-down here and sleep, and y-you are going upst-stairs to sleep in a re-real bed.”  She gave him a little smile, and suddenly he could see how much this had worried her, how afraid she’d been.  Begonia had just had to sit here, unable to help, forced to wait and hope that a boy she had only just met (Iris was pretty sure – although some of their comments had been a little strange) could rescue her dearest friend from the worst monsters in the world, glitches included.  Iris had succeeded, thank the Sun, but Lillium was in rough shape. 

At least Begonia could be here now, to help him and Iris and to reassure herself that he was alright, after everything.  “I’m g-going to stay up f-for a w-while, I’ll keep an e-eye on him.  Y-you just f-focus on resting.  You d-did your part.”  Her eyes almost glowed in the dim light, reminding Iris of the way Lillium had been able to _command_ the spawncampers – and Iris himself – and the way the eyes set into his palms had shone in the darkness of the spawncamper tent. 

But Begonia was not a Lily.  Her eyes glowed with the reflection of the candles and soft lighting fixtures of her house, and she only had two.  Her hands lay still and open in her lap, palms empty of anything but lines. 

Iris knew that he should have questions.  He should have so many questions, enough to keep them trapped in this house for a week, until Lillium was fully recovered and Begonia had calmed and Iris knew everything that he was supposed to know.  And he would have questions.  Lots of them.  Just… not now. 

He was so exhausted that Begonia had to help him up the stairs, the fluttery girl almost carrying him by the end.  The bed could have been a piece of rock and it would have been enough.  Fortunately for his spine, it was a real bed, soft and warm and more than inviting. 

Later, there would be questions.  The eyes on Lillium’s hands, the Lily Commands, the spawncampers and the Demiflora Resistance and Irid and all of it.  But that would all come later.  They were safe, and Lillium was alive, and Begonia’s house was still and quiet and warm.  There were questions that were going to need answers, but for now, everything was all right. 

For now, Iris slept. 

**Author's Note:**

> i just want lillium to be okay. and also have superpowers. because i'm really interested in the demiflora powers and we Do Not Know Enough Yet. please. vel. give me moer. (take care of yourself first though of course! i just really love all your work and am always happy to see all the cool things you post!)
> 
> motivation to finally post this brought to you by p820 because lilliuuuuum. i don't know where ctc will be going in the future and i'm certain that all my theories are gonna go straight out the window, but that's ok because i really want to see what happens for real! even if the series has to go on a break, i'll always be excited to pick it back up and see where things go!
> 
> thanks for reading!


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